


let these chains be ashes

by bittereternity



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-07 01:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/742748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittereternity/pseuds/bittereternity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a long time since school but they're all children; wide-eyed, hands by their sides, changing the world, saving lives. Gale and Peeta, after the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let these chains be ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [electrumqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/electrumqueen/gifts).



> written for electrumqueen's prompt: gale/peeta; _sleeping as we do on opposite sides of a venn diagram_.

_if this ever goes the wrong way/ save me from the where are they now_

- Richard Walters _, the escape artist._

*

They make him a hero after the war.

In a post-war interview in District Two, an old woman in tears tells him: we owe our future to you.

The cameras zoom in and people in the audience bring out tissues and dab their cheeks.

Gale forces down the bile rising in his throat and ducks his head in an imitation of faux-humility, looks up at the mass in front of him through lowered lashes.  The audience goes crazy.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Peeta and Katniss at the other end of the podium. Katniss is staring at an imaginary point above the crowd but Peeta looks directly at him and holds his gaze.

He looks away first.

*

Later, over a glass of something murky and viscous and brown at the after-party, Peeta will tell him: “They don’t really know what they’re saying, you know that right?”

*

The first time they really meet, he’s on the platform with Katniss’ family as the train pulls into the station and the Victors are escorted out amidst a throng of Peacekeepers and well-wishers.

Katniss smiles, loud and bright and confident at the crowd, but her eyes are broken inside and her knuckles are white. He sees Peeta next to her, clutching her hand in his own.

Later on, all he remembers is a flash of blond hair and incredibly blue eyes, but his attention has snapped back towards Katniss already.  
In a list of chronological list of people who actually _matter_ to him, Peeta will rank somewhere in the negatives.

*

In District Four during their victory tour, Annie Cresta walks up to the podium towards them, her hands firmly at her sides, her hair pulled back, and her dress taut over her rapidly growing belly.

She tries to smile at him and then spots Peeta and Haymitch sitting on the stairs at the other side of the stage. They both rise to greet her, wary smiles and unspoken names hanging in the air, and she hugs Haymitch first, and then Peeta.

Over her bony shoulders, Peeta’s eyes seem a little too bright but he never looks directly at him.

*

They are all dying but they’re thanking him first.

Dead bodies are being cremated and set on fire, and before they burst into flames, they’re all looking at him with a perverse sense of gratefulness.

They’re all dead but they’re polite, like it’s important.

*

In District Three, Johanna asks, “Why are you touring, anyway? It’s not like they _made_ you do it.”

Her fingers stumble over themselves, as if looking for something to fill the gaps, and her hair is messy and falls everywhere on her face. He reaches forward and tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear. It doesn’t help.

“Someone has to,” he says, and it’s partly true. He doesn’t tell her about the empty space he’s left behind where there was once supposed to be _something,_ but she looks like she knows it, anyway.

*

In the first victory celebration back at Two, the crowd chants for their mockingjay, screams the words _girl on fire, girl on fire, girl on fire_ over and over again.

Katniss tries to smile, but really, she just looks nauseated and leaves halfway through the celebrations.

Peeta steps forwards, says things like _she’s working through her grief_ and _it’s all fine_ and he stomps the juvenile urge to scream at the hollow words and shout _bullshit._

The girl on fire is long burnt out; the audience just doesn’t know it yet.

*

It’s been a long time since school but they’re all children; wide-eyed, hands by their sides, changing the world, saving lives.

*

Katniss burns and burns and burns and when she’s all done, she leaves behind a pungent smell of smoke and an abyss of ashes.

He steps forwards, steps in the ash and tries not to let it slip through his fingers as he stacks it together to build a new world. It is the only deliverance he will allow himself.

Peeta steps next to him, asks _can I help._

*

In District Nine, it rains. There are storm clouds in the sky and and big, fat raindrops splatter on their skins and roll down to the ground. 

It rains during the celebrations, and the crowd suddenly pauses.  They look up and try to shelter themselves from the water on their heads, in their eyes. People who have been lucky enough to grow old move to the sidelines, look for a barrier over their heads. The children try to catch raindrops in their outstretched hands. 

On the stage, Peeta laughs and twists his mouth. "They act like they're all still alive," is what he says, leaning forward to whisper into Gale's ear. 

Gale turns to look at him. The truth looks bitter when it's reflected in blue. 

*

Gale knows this, even as he doesn't know much of anything else: there is no place for truth in this world he's made. This is not a place where truth sets a heart free. 

*

In District Eleven, Peeta asks: “Do you regret it?”

He doesn’t elaborate, doesn’t need to.

Gale considers it. “I think there were some unfortunate consequences,” he says, carefully.

Peeta’s head snaps up as he looks at him. There’s a slight twitch in the corner of his lips. “That’s not what I asked,” he says.

Gale considers him through half-closed eyes. “I don’t think I can ever regret making the bomb,” is what he finally says, choosing his words carefully and laying them out like cards on a poker-table.

The twitch turns into a half-smile.  “Yeah,” Peeta mumbles and looks out of the window again.

Gale squirms in his seat, feels a bubble of _something_ forming at the back of his throat and has to clench his fists to get over the illogical temptation to _defend_ himself. It is suddenly important, for no reason other than the fact that Peeta has bright blue eyes, that Peeta looks at him again.

*

An hour later, Peeta turns to him and says: _I don’t regret it either._

 _You didn’t have anything to do with the bomb_ is on the tip of his tongue, but it is swallowed in an overwhelming sense of gratitude.

*

They're all dead but they say, _thank you_. 

They're all dying but their eyes are earnest, smiles painful. They have been lying before they were even born, you see.

*

That night in the train, he dreams of long blonde hair and young, innocent laughter, and the sound is foreign to his years and the halos are all blue, blue like Peeta’s eyes, blue like _hers_ once were. _Primrose, primrose, primrose,_ his mind chants, but he can’t wake up because he’s too busy setting everything on fire.

When he wakes up, he is gasping loudly and his face and hair are matted with sweat. There is a tentative knock on his door before it opens and Peeta enters.

“I heard you calling out her name,” he says, sitting next to him quietly and handing him a glass of water.

Gale rubs his eyes furiously to stop the tears from forming. “I dreamt that I was burning her,” he says, and it’s the closest he will ever come to an apology but he’s not the one who needs it.

He reaches forwards and pushes his hair out of his face. Then he feels Peeta’s fingers, soft and calloused and unscarred by the war, as they run down his face. He shivers imperceptibly, and Peeta’s fingers feels incredibly foreign and incredibly familiar all at once, like he’s straightening out every single regret Gale has had etched there.

Peeta dips his head and kisses him, brings a hand up to his neck to support him. The kiss is soft and a little strained and a little wet, but Gale closes his eyes and leans into it like he needs it to breathe. Peeta rests his forehead against his, and they are so close that if he focuses, he can hear their hearts beating together.

“Please,” he says.

*

Peeta's hand set him on fire again, again, again, but this time it's a warm glow, this time it's something strong and hot and it's licking him and surrounding him. He feels enclosed, protected, and he takes a deep breath. Peeta uses his lips to map out the contours of his body, trails over every single scar and reveres them, worships them like they are all fragments of a beautiful memory. His lips reach Gale's hips and the all together, he feels like he's soaring high and falling down and he blindly tries to hold on to the sensation and _arches_ into the feel of Peeta's lips and then -

He pulls back suddenly, hands still entangled in Gale's hair but with a fierce blaze in his eyes that has nothing to do with being aroused.

"I'm not _her_ ," Peeta hisses in his ear, the grip on his hair tightening to the point where a wince is already half-forming on his lips. "If you think this is about _her - "_ but then the fire in Peeta's eyes are gone, only to be replaced with something akin to defeat.

Funny, Gale hadn't been thinking that at all.

*

When the train reaches Twelve, he’s the first one out at the break of dawn before the cameras arrive. He steps out, looks around and tries to breathe in the air. Then he turns on his heels and walks to the platform at the other end, boards a train that will take him back to Two as inconspicuously as possible.

He doesn’t leave a note.

*

He doesn’t watch the Twelve celebrating on TV.

He downs shot after shot of something that tastes vile and smells viler, and passes out on his own couch.

*

They’re all dead but they stop him in the streets, smile and say: _thank you._

*

On TV, they ask him what his future is.

He twists his face into something resembling a smile. “You know,” he says, keeping his voice light and uncaring and fake, “I’m still trying to find out where I fit in.”

The presenter thanks him for coming.

*

Peeta shows up at his door two weeks later, empty-handed and hands shoved in his pockets. They stare at each other as he leans against his door.

“How’s she?” It is the first thing he can think of.

Peeta shrugs. “I told her I was coming here,” he says.

Gale gives him a sidelong glance. “Does it matter?” he asks.

Peeta sighs, walks into his tiny kitchen like he’s _belonged_ there forever, and pours himself a glass of water. “She misses you,” he offers.

That makes him laugh, and he cringes at the sound of his own breath. “No, she doesn’t.”

Peeta sighs again, and he looks too old to have smooth skin and an unwrinkled forehead. “She’s fine, Gale,” is all he says. He even sounds like he believes it.

*

When he wakes up to get a glass of water, the couch is empty and Peeta is leaning over the railing in his balcony, looking towards the sky.  
“I live on the second floor,” he says. “If you’re thinking of jumping, it won’t make a difference.”

Peeta twitches and turns back. His shoulders tense, and instantaneously relax a fraction when he sees him.

“That’s not what I’m doing,” he says.

Gale moves to stand next to him and Peeta catches his wrist. Peeta’s mouth on him is hot and bitter, and his grip his bruising in a way that’s not _Peeta_ and he’s pretty sure he will have finger-shaped bruises in the morning. Peeta trails kisses against his jaw, nibble at that sensitive spot right above his collar and rips his shirt open.

“ _God,_ Gale,” he says, harsh and breathless like he’s just run a marathon. “I _love_ you.”

Gale pulls him towards himself and strokes his hair, his kindly, kindly eyes and the first thing he sees is the lack of deceit. _This is not the world he’s supposed to belong in,_ he thinks as he pulls Peeta by the lapel of his shirt to plant a kiss on his swollen lips.

“You should go,” he says, in the midst of the haze of ecstasy coursing through him and the warmth of Peeta’s mouth.

*

[the first time is also this:

He is at the far end of the bar, hovering near Haymitch as he watches Peeta and Katniss, resplendent together and hand-in-hand at the banquet that the Capitol has thrown at Twelve for their very own Victors.

Haymitch is half-drunk and on the way to forgetting this whole thing and Gale is almost jealous.

“ _Look,”_ Haymitch suddenly says, nudging him towards the two of them. “They are such _sweethearts, “_ he says loudly for the camera, “look at them with that adoring gaze they have for each other.”

Haymitch fakes a cooing sound and makes a mockery of the camera following them but he’s wrong, all the same.

Katniss isn’t the one Peeta’s looking at.]

*

He finally makes it to District Twelve three months later.

Posy wraps her arms around his legs and looks at him with a gaze that’s all adoration and no judgment, and his mother kisses his cheeks like he’s a lifeline.

District Twelve smells like ashes, but he’s built it back with his own hands.

*  
They recognize him on the streets here too. People, people he had known in the before, people who had known him when he was just another kid trying to survive, stop him on the streets and call out his name.

There are voices all around, but they say, _hey, gale_ and _it's good to see you._ He waits, and clutches the inside of his pockets, but no one thanks him here, at home.

He thinks he's had enough politeness to last him a lifetime, anyway.

*

They're all dying but they smile and say, _gale._

They are all dead but they tap his shoulders and point to his heart. _this is your home,_ they say, _come back and die with us._

*

He knocks on Katniss’ door that afternoon.

She opens it and stops short. Her hair is pulled back in a loose braid and her nails are short and there is finally, _finally_ some color in her cheeks. It’s not enough but it’s something.

Peeta comes in without looking up, starts to say _who is it_ and stops. He moves his gaze from hers to meet his, and that’s where they stay until Katniss steps forward.

“Hi,” she says, and her voice is small and weary and tired and scared and all the things that he would’ve never associated with the girl who could have once been his. _Catnip, catnip,_ go the rustles of the leaves and the whispers in the woods but she doesn’t have the strength to reply anymore.

He’s still looking at Peeta when she looks at him, follows her gaze and mistakes it for some kind of reprehensible vindication.

She takes a step to stand in between them but it doesn’t matter, in this moment and _only_ in this moment, there’s only him and there’s Peeta in the other end, and between their eyes, there’s a whole world they are building.

Peeta looks away first.

*

[the first time is this, too:

Peeta is looking at him from the other end of the hall at the Victors’ banquet and he knows this, feels this because he is looking right back at him.

Peeta gives him a half-smile, and he raises his glass slightly in his direction. _For the camera, for the camera,_ but not really.

They don’t look away.]

*

end.


End file.
